Sniper's Execution Met With Mixed Feelings From Victims' Families

Jarratt, Virginia — Justice fell short with the execution of Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammad, one of his victims’ survivors said after witnessing his death by lethal injection.

Muhammad died silently Tuesday night in a Virginia prison death chamber filled with lawyers, lawmen and his victims’ survivors.

After the execution, Steven Moore said he thought about Muhammad’s accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, who received a life sentence for their crimes.

“Well, myself, I wish Malvo was right there beside Muhammad,” said Moore, whose sister, FBI analyst Linda Franklin, was gunned down in Virginia. “They both committed the same crimes. No, I don’t feel any closure. I mean, it’s … it … nothing changes.”

Muhammad was the mastermind behind the Washington-area sniper attacks of 2002, which left 10 dead and terrorized the nation’s capital. He was declared dead at 9:11 p.m. ET, said Larry Traylor, director of communications for the Virginia Department of Corrections.

“There were no complications,” Traylor told reporters outside the Greenville Correctional Center. “Mr. Muhammad was asked if he wished to make a last statement. He did not acknowledge this or make a last statement whatsoever.”

In fact, Muhammad, 48, said nothing from the time he entered the death chamber accompanied by guards at 8:58 p.m., Traylor said.

But in a statement read by one of his attorneys, Muhammad still denied he had committed the crimes.

“Mr. Muhammad maintains his innocence in this case, and he always has. He is not remorseful, although he does extend his condolences to the families. What these families went through is tragic in every level. Given the injustices in this case, what Mr. Muhammad went through is equally as tragic,” said J. Wyndal Gordon, who was Muhammad’s stand-by attorney in his Maryland trial, in which he represented himself.